Before the Flood
Last night I watched a documentary produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and National Geographic titled Before the Flood which you can watch on YouTube for free. The theme of the film centers around a very symbolic painting that hung above Leo’s crib as a child — the Garden of Earthly Delights:
The painter Bosch envisioned the evolution of the world in this painting. On the left, there’s Adam and Eve and the world when everything was untouched, new and pure.
The middle panel looks like an insane party — people swimming, interacting with the land and obviously, each other. But notice how crowded it is... And notice how resourceful everyone is, using every part of the land and the creatures that roam the land. A modern day depiction of the middle panel could simply just be an aerial shot of NYC or Beijing IMO.
And then lastly, look at the right panel which is dark and depressing. There’s no light, everything is trashed, and people are dead.
In my opinion, the documentary was an attempt to convince the masses that dark and gloomy days (the right panel) are inevitably ahead of us if we continue to ignore the damage we’re doing to our planet.
And let me tell you, I am 100% convinced after watching this.
It’s not that I wasn’t aware of it before… I took a Political Science class in college where we covered this things — overpopulation, water issues, carbon pollution, etc. And living in this world the past 10 years, it’s almost impossible not to notice the insane climate shifts and freak occurrences that surface. Yet, I rarely actually think about it. It’s so easy to go on and live your life because in reality, our generation isn’t the one that’s truly going to suffer from all this — it’s the generations that follow.
BUT Leo really shook things up for me with this piece. He travels around the world and has conversations about climate change to some of the greatest leaders of the world like the UN Secretary General, our President, high ranking officials in India and China, and more. These conversations and images are mind blowing. He talks with several scientists who all give incredible but also frightening insight into what we’re doing to the world.
Seriously, the documentary is fucking mindblowing….
I’m not going to write a “recap” piece on everything covered. I truly urge you to go watch and have your own reactions and takeaways. But one thing I am going to bitch about is the fact that there are people in our country (the US) that literally don’t believe this exists.
And these people are rich politicians (almost always republicans) that are paid off by the likes of the Koch brothers (owners of MASS fossil fuel companies) and other mass polluters (food companies, coal, etc).
These politicians help pass laws that prohibit the government from acting on this issue even though all the evidence is there. It’s because the companies that pay them (lots of fucking money) can’t afford to lose $$. Even worse, they also pass laws that give these companies breaks.
That is so disturbing to me….The damage we do as the #2 (just recently passed by China after holding the #1 spot down for years) polluter in the world affects those around the world worse than us. We are shitting all over the world because our politicians are corrupt.
With election season around the corner, that’s one thing we can change. We can vote for people who are not corrupt (at least THIS corrupt) and we can vote for people who actually believe in climate change and can push the needle forward.
What’s funny is in the past few weeks, I’ve probably received 10+ texts from people asking if I’m voting for climate change friendly candidates. I thought it was kind of intriguing and always replied yes (without even knowing who they were) but now I understand why people are going out of their way to ensure that.
In a lot of ways, this is one of the biggest issues our country faces because the window to act and prevent the long term damage is so small.
OK — enough ranting, please peep the documentary and lemme know what you think.
